The Politics of History and the “War of Monuments” in Estonia

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Brüggemann ◽  
Andres Kasekamp
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Baltic State ◽  
Politics Of History ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Second World

After darkness fell over the provincial town of Lihula on 2 September 2004, youths pelted riot police with stones. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the peaceful and orderly small Baltic State of Estonia. The police were protecting a crane and its driver sent by the Ministry of the Interior to remove a monument honouring those Estonians who fought on the German side against the Red Army during the Second World War. In the evening of 26 April 2007 demonstrators in Tallinn pelted riot police with stones and went on a rampage of smashing windows and looting. The Estonian capital had never experienced anything like this. The police were protecting the site of a monument honouring Soviet soldiers who had fought against Nazi Germany. At night, when the rioting had ceased, a crane ordered by the Ministry of Defence removed the monument.

ABCs of the Revolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-291
Author(s):  
Egor A. Yesyunin
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Development History ◽  
The People ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Revolution

The article is devoted to the satirical agitation ABCs that appeared during the Civil War, which have never previously been identified by researchers as a separate type of agitation art. The ABCs, which used to have the narrow purpose of teaching children to read and write before, became a form of agitation art in the hands of artists and writers. This was facilitated by the fact that ABCs, in contrast to primers, are less loaded with educational material and, accordingly, they have more space for illustrations. The article presents the development history of the agitation ABCs, focusing in detail on four of them: V.V. Mayakovsky’s “Soviet ABC”, D.S. Moor’s “Red Army Soldier’s ABC”, A.I. Strakhov’s “ABC of the Revolution”, and M.M. Cheremnykh’s “Anti-Religious ABC”. There is also briefly considered “Our ABC”: the “TASS Posters” created by various artists during the Second World War. The article highlights the special significance of V.V. Mayakovsky’s first agitation ABC, which later became a reference point for many artists. The authors of the first satirical ABCs of the Civil War period consciously used the traditional form of popular prints, as well as ditties and sayings, in order to create images close to the people. The article focuses on the iconographic connections between the ABCs and posters in the works of D.S. Moor and M.M. Cheremnykh, who transferred their solutions from the posters to the ABCs.

scholarly journals History and Politics and the Politics of History: Poland and Its Museums of Contemporary History

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Etges ◽  
Irmgard Zündorf ◽  
Paweł Machcewicz
Keyword(s):  
Exhibition Design ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
World War ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Politics Of History ◽  
Founding Director ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe Polish museum landscape has turned into a battleground between politicians and historians. Much of that has focused on the highly praised Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk which opened in March 2017. Its founding director Pawel Machcewicz was dismissed when the conservative-nationalist party “Law and Justice” came to power. The article and the interview with Machcewicz discuss that story, the founding and exhibition design of other Polish history museums as well as the politics of history in Poland and beyond.

scholarly journals Axis Internationalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 20-56
Author(s):  
David Brydan
Keyword(s):  
International Cooperation ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
New Order ◽  
World War ◽  
Axis Axis ◽  
Scientific Networks ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This chapter explores the relationship between Spain and the Axis powers during the Second World War. Spanish experts were involved in intensive exchange with Nazi Germany during the war. This formed part of a wider pattern of cooperation between Axis, Axis-aligned, and neutral states under the auspices of the Nazi ‘New Order’. This chapter argues that the scientific networks, conferences, and organizations promoted by Nazi Germany represented a form of ‘Axis internationalism’, which appropriated the language and practices of pre-war internationalism to promote the idea of collaborative continental order under Nazi leadership. Spanish experts, like many of their European counterparts, were willing to embrace Axis internationalism as a new, and in many ways improved, form of international cooperation. Their work highlights how internationalist structures and ideas, particularly within the ‘technical’ and humanitarian fields of health and medicine, could be appropriated by political projects from across the ideological spectrum.

God Save the USSR

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Eden
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
World War ◽  
Holy War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Second World

God Save the USSR reviews religious life in the Soviet Union during the Second World War and shows how, as the Soviet Red Army was locked in brutal combat against the Nazis, Stalin ended the state’s violent, decades-long persecution of religion. In a stunning reversal, priests, imams, rabbis, and other religious elites—many of them newly released from the Gulag—were tasked with rallying Soviet citizens to a “Holy War” against Hitler. The book depicts the delight of some citizens, and the horror of others, as Stalin’s reversal encouraged a widespread perception that his “war on religion” was over. A revolution in Soviet religious life ensued: soldiers prayed on the battlefield; entire villages celebrated once-banned holidays; and state-backed religious leaders used their new positions to not only consolidate power over their communities but also petition for further religious freedoms. As a window on this wartime “religious revolution,” this book focuses on the Soviet Union’s Muslims, using sources in several languages (including Russian, Tatar, Bashkir, Uzbek, Persian, and Kumyk). Drawing evidence from eyewitness accounts, interviews, soldiers’ letters, frontline poetry, agents’ reports, petitions, and the words of Soviet Muslim leaders, the book argues that the religious revolution was fomented simultaneously by the state and by religious Soviet citizens: the state gave an inch, and many citizens took a mile, as atheist Soviet agents looked on in exasperation at the resurgence of unconcealed devotional life.

The Soviet Legacy in Thinking about Fascism

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-42
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
Second World

This chapter goes back in time to look at the Soviet construction of the Russian term fashizm and some of the ambiguities that the Soviet society cultivated toward the term and its historical personification, Nazi Germany. It recalls that the term fascism (fashizm), in Soviet times, belonged more to an emotional than to an analytical lexicon. The chapter also discusses Russia's history and Russians' memories of the Second World War, called the Great Patriotic War in Russian (Velikaia otechestvennaia voina) and Victory Day (Den´ pobedy). It reviews how the cult of war is intimately linked to the Brezhnev era and provided the context in which commemoration of the Great Patriotic War was institutionalized as a sacred symbol of the Soviet Union, a confirmation of the soundness of the socialist system and the unity of its peoples. The chapter then argues that the very solemnity of Soviet anti-fascism, and its centrality to the country's political identity constitute the fundaments inherited from Soviet times on the basis of which the notion of fascism is operationalized in today's Russia. Ultimately, the chapter further elaborates the three main sources of the Soviet's cryptic fascination with Nazi Germany and source of knowledge about fashizm: the Nazi propaganda, criminal culture, and cinema and culture.

On the Brink of Bacteriological War

2018 ◽  
pp. 137-174
Author(s):  
Anthony Rimmington
Keyword(s):  
Late Summer ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Biological Agents ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Second World

During the 1930s, a series of reports generated by both German and Soviet intelligence fueled increasing alarm with regard to the perceived BW capabilities allegedly being developed by their potential opponents. After the onset of the Second World War, if either side was going to break the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of gas and bacteriological warfare, to which they had both agreed to abide, then 1942 was the most likely year. However, a number of prominent scholars have strongly disputed Alibek’s account of the deliberate aerosol dissemination of tularemia by the Red Army at Stalingrad in the late summer of 1942. The occasional use by Soviet-supported partisans of biological agents against the German occupation forces is better documented but there is no evidence that these attacks formed part of a wider, centrally coordinated, campaign of biological sabotage by the Soviet authorities.

Spanish Views of Nazi Germany, 1933–45: A Fascist Hybridization?

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 858-879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xosé M. Núñez Seixas
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
World War ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
National Pride ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
Second World ◽  
Material Welfare

From the early 1930s, admiration for Hitler and Nazi Germany became characteristic of Spanish fascists. They were fascinated by the image of National Socialism and its example of ‘national resurgence’. During the war, the influence of Nazi Germany among Spanish fascists, traditionalists and supporters of the emerging Franco regime increased. On their return, Spanish travellers to Nazi Germany portrayed an enthusiastic image of a new society, marked by strong national pride, economic resurgence, social solidarity and material welfare. Until the end of the Second World War, several thousand Spanish Fascists and supporters of the Franco Regime visited Nazi Germany as soldiers on their way to and from the Eastern front, as civil workers or as students. A study of the experiences of such individuals may broaden our perspective on how Nazi Germany influenced foreign visitors. What image of Nazi Germany did those visitors paint in their letters, diaries and memoirs? What was left from this experience in post-1945 Spanish memories?

Jurisprudence of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission: Albania Claims

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Bederman
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
World War ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Political Unrest ◽  
Second World ◽  
Of Greece

Albania ranks among the smallest and poorest countries in Europe, located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas just north of Greece. It gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912 (accounting for the fact that a majority of the population is Muslim) and subsisted as a monarchy for much of the interwar period. Albania was occupied by Italy (and then Nazi Germany) for all of the Second World War. Communist partisans expelled the Germans in 1944, without the assistance of Soviet forces, and thus began nearly a half-century of a totalitarian, isolationist rule by an extremely repressive Communist regime under the leadership of Enver Hoxha and Ramiz Alia. This regime was definitively overthrown in 1991. Since that time, Albania has been periodically wracked by civil and political unrest, leading to substantial violence in 1997 that was quelled only with the brief deployment of a UN multinational protection force.

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